Re: [PLUG] Linux Business Forum, again...

[Adam Turoff <ziggy@panix.com>]

On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 03:00:40AM -0500, Paul wrote:
> One thought that comes to mind is another contrast between your forum 
> concept and PLUG.  PLUG is cooperative and not profit oriented.  
> Businesses are usually the exact opposite.  Why would successful 
> companies or consultants want to reveal secrets to competitors?

I don't see how your comparision is particularly relevant.

Yes, businesses compete with each other.  But apparel retailers, coffee
shops, convenience stores and restaurants do not compete directly with
each other.  Furthermore, businesses in the same sector tend to compete
on their own products and services, not in IT.  

Further still, companies that compete on IT are competing on the value IT
adds to the organization, not on the value something as basic as, say
Linux, brings to the table.  For example, Linux adoption is big on Wall
Street, and all of the big banks have a good idea what their peers are
doing with Linux.  They are all happy to share success stories on how
Linux works great with clusters and mainframes, but zealously guard
precisely how Linux helped to make their foreign exchange desk the most
profitable one on the street.

Gathering together to share information about basic technology does not
impede the ability of a business to compete against its competitors.
And there's good precedent here: in the 1950s, SHARE started as a group
of corporate users of early IBM machines.  IIRC, they went so far as to
write a time sharing operating system for these machines because (a) IBM
didn't see the value there, and (b) because time sharing made these
machines much more valuable to the SHARE member organizations.

Z.

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